


i called your name 'til the fever broke

by butwewillstay



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27000583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butwewillstay/pseuds/butwewillstay
Summary: "She feels dead, more dead than she had before, as though Death has decided He isn’t satisfied with leeching the life from her bones and has come back to tear the heart from her chest.She may have been Orpheus’ muse, but she is Hades’ canary — trapped, unable to fly away from his cage — and she can feel the smoke of Hadestown creeping into her lungs and choking her."-the aftermath
Relationships: Eurydice & Hades (Hadestown), Eurydice & Persephone (Hadestown), Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown), Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 71





	i called your name 'til the fever broke

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "In the Woods Somewhere" by Hozier, which fits Orpheus and Eurydice pretty well.

The King is standing on the train platform when she stumbles out of the tunnel that leads to the surface, and she isn’t sure if he’s there to wait for her or to simply bid his wife goodbye. Lady Persephone is gone now, on the way back up to the surface with sunlight and flowers and  _ Orpheus. _

Hades turns toward her when she steps off the tracks, and Eurydice thinks there’s a flicker of some emotion in his eyes  — pity? Disappointment? — before his gaze becomes hard as the wall surrounding them and he turns away.

She is not really aware of what is going on around her, as the shades part around her, whispering amongst themselves. All she can see is Orpheus framed by the sunlight leeching into Orcus’ Mouth as he stood frozen mere feet away from freedom, and his horror-filled expression as the tunnel had closed between them.

_ “It’s you.” _

_ “It’s me.” _

A group of workers that she does not recognize gently lead Eurydice to the barracks, which are dusty and unused from centuries of round-the-clock shifts in the mines. Someone offers her something to eat, but she is not hungry. She feels nothing, just a bitter numbness that boils down to  _ how could we have come so close? _

She feels dead, more dead than she had before, as though Death has decided He isn’t satisfied with leeching the life from her bones and has come back to tear the heart from her chest.

She may have been Orpheus’ muse, but she is Hades’ canary  — trapped, unable to fly away from his cage — and she can feel the smoke of Hadestown creeping into her lungs and choking her. It burns her nose until she is crying, tears running down her cheeks and wetting the pillow below her head. 

It ain’t fair, she laments, and dryly thinks that she sounds like Orpheus, naive and hopeful, because she should know by now that the world is not fair. 

Minutes, hours, days later (there is no sun here, and time flows strangely) she drags herself out of the bed and wanders into the street, because there is no use wasting away like the wraiths in Asphodel while she waits for Orpheus. 

She didn’t realize it before, but the ever-present sound of machinery is absent. The kingdom is quiet.

Eurydice grabs the arm of a nearby shade, a boy who doesn’t look much older than fifteen. His eyes are a little unfocused, but not completely unseeing as the workers’ eyes had been when Eurydice had first arrived in Hadestown.

“What’s goin’ on?” She asks, and the boy blinks at her for a few seconds before answering.

“Nobody is workin’ today,” He says, and grins at her. “We can remember what it’s like up above. That poet helped us remember.”

Something untwists a little in the cold knot of grief in Eurydice’s heart. 

“Yeah,” She says. “Yeah, he did.”

-

Gradually, the Underworld falls back into its usual rhythm. The King’s foremen corral the workers back into the mines, but the hours are better and there are breaks. The wall’s still there, but the gates ain’t locked anymore. The mess halls are no longer deserted, and people congregate there to talk and eat. The land of the dead feels a little more alive. 

Eurydice is workin’ now, countin’ time in the ringing clangs of a pickaxe being driven into the ground. Tryin’ to make it pass faster. It doesn’t really work. She tries to talk to the other workers, but they’ve been down too long to really relate to the longing she has for the overworld and Orpheus, like a piece has been ripped from her soul.

Eurydice has not seen Lord Hades for a long while. His presence can still be felt, though: the Erinyes and the Fates prowl through the factories and mines, makin’ sure the workers don’t leave a second before their shifts are over. 

But it is not the Erinyes or the Fates that Eurydice wants to talk to. Even though Hades is the reason she is down here and not up above with Orpheus, she wishes that she could speak with him, and ask him  _ why her _ and  _ how does he bear it _ . Or maybe just slap him, although hitting a God in his own kingdom would get her thrown into Tartarus for eternity. 

Instead, she wanders through the streets of Hadestown, lookin’ up at the dark abyss of the earth above her, starless and empty. Even after months, she still expects to see the sky. She walks by Persephone’s speakeasy, locked up for the Summer, and catches a glimpse of the bottles lined up on the shelves inside. It would be easy, to drown herself in ale until she forgets — a makeshift Lethe. 

But then a shade passes by her, humming Orpheus’ song under his breath —  _ la la la la la la la  _ — and suddenly Eurydice can smell the sweet scent of that flower he’d given her on the day he’d proposed, and remembers that she’d promised to wait for him. She looks up at the dirt again. Keeps walking.

Eventually, she ends up at the doors of Hades’ palace, and nobody stops her as she pushes them open. The entrance hall is dimly lit and less opulent than she expected. On the wall across from the door is a portrait of a much younger King and Queen, and they both look happier than Eurydice has ever seen them. 

She makes her way up the grand staircase and walks down the hall towards an arched doorway to her right. The Host of Many is seated at a desk facing her, his head bent over as he writers in some sort of ledger, stacks of paper next to him. A large black dog is sprawled across the rug in front of the desk, and it perks its head up when she enters the room. 

“Ain’t you supposed to be workin’?” Hades looks up at her, and Eurydice remembers the last time she was in this room, signin’ her life away.

“Finished my shift,” She answers, and tries not to shrink under the old God’s gaze. There is silence for a moment as he glances back towards his papers and writes something else down. Looks up again. Sighs.

“What is it?” He asks, not unkindly, but not rudely either.

“Why me?” She says bluntly, and winces slightly. She hadn’t meant to be that direct. 

Hades sighs again and puts down his pen. 

“Sit down,” He says, and gestures to a chair on the other side of the desk. She does, and tries to read his expression. She’s unsuccessful.

“Why you?” He repeats her question. “You were there. There, and hungry, and lookin’ for work. Same as all the other workers I bring down.”

There are things he isn’t saying, things about making his wife jealous and her being young and female, but Eurydice doesn’t bring them up. 

“Alright,” She says. “Alright, but why did you let us go if you knew we weren’t goin’ to make it?”

“I didn’t,” He says, and it almost sounds as if there is something akin to pity in his voice. “Almost thought that poet of yours woulda been able to do it.” 

Eurydice doesn’t know if she wants his sympathy or not. She swallows back the lump in her throat because she refuses to cry in front of the King, and nods. She has her answers now, to the questions that have been driving her since she was dragged away from any chance at freedom. Now she just has to wait.

Not like she’s the only one.

“How do you do it, for half the year?” She says. “Without her, I mean.”

Hades stares at her for a second, his eyes dark like the coal he drags from the ground and a little reminiscent of his Titan father. The eyes of Death. 

Then he looks back down at his ledger. Closes it, and chuckles dryly. “Work,” He says. “Ain’t nothing you can do about it, so find a way to spend the time and wait.”

She doesn’t know if he’s talking about himself waiting for his wife or just telling Eurydice how to wait for Orpheus, but either way, she understands. 

Eurydice wonders if Hades would have turned around, if it was him leading Persephone out of hell. She wonders if he would have even thought she’d follow him. Maybe, after Orpheus’ song. Maybe.

-

When September comes, winter rolls into Hadestown in the form of a train and a Goddess. It’s the first time in a long while that Lady Persephone has been away the full six months. It’s strained the King, Eurydice can tell, and he’s developed a habit of pacing his kingdom at night. She only knows this because it’s a habit they share, despite the hard labor of her workdays, ‘cause when she closes her eyes her dreams are filled with Orpheus and his face when he’d turned around. 

So she wanders through the quiet streets, and ignores the starless earth-sky while humming her husband’s song under her breath, and waits.

When the Queen returns, Eurydice is leaving the factory on her way back to the barracks (not home, because even after months down below “home” is still Orpheus’ little run-down cottage up above) and she can’t hear the train over the pounding of machinery, but she can tell who’s arrived by the way the Asphodel flowers in the fields behind the warehouses perk up a little more than they did before, and the shades around her stop working for a moment to whisper among themselves. 

Eurydice can feel it too, as though a gust of fresh air has blown through the industrial city. As she approaches the main road and the train station, she slips into the small crowd of workers on break that have congregated to greet their Lady. 

The shining locomotive still makes her gut sink and reminds her of storms and Death’s enticing whispers and mistakes, but she doesn’t leave. The train is also the closest thing she can get to the surface.

The King steps off first, and turns back toward the train car, offering his hand. The Queen takes it, and steps onto the platform. She’s still wearing her green summer dress, and she looks a little wary of what she’ll find outside. When she sees the group of shades standing below the platform she freezes, her guarded expression shifting into one of surprise. She turns to her husband and says something, although Eurydice is too far away to make out what it is. 

The Lady’s husband says something back, the two of them standing real close like they’re stuck in each others’ orbits. They turn away from the crowd of shades and walk away; the train door slams shut. The locomotive begins to move, up along the track to collect more souls. The finality of the shining machine disappearing up into the tunnel dispels all of Eurydice’s spontaneous, half-formed plans to run up there and beg Persephone for…for what? Life? A second chance? Orpheus? Doesn’t matter, it isn’t like any of them are feasible. Anyways, they’re gone.

So she leaves too, turnin’ back to the factory to beat down her despair with a hammer.

-

The bar reopens, as it does each winter, but this year it’s louder. Ain’t just a place for mourning what’s been lost anymore, now it’s brighter and happier.

Nobody pays her much mind when she pushes open the door, but when Eurydice perches on a barstool, the Lady turns from where she’d been adjusting something on a shelf, and her eyes widen a little in recognition. 

“Oh, sister,” Persephone says, and passes her a glass full of something strong. Eurydice sips it at first, then changes her mind and downs it in one go. Stares at the smooth surface of the bar. Raises her head.

“How is he?” She asks, and Persephone pauses for a moment as if she’s composing what she wants to say in her head. 

“Gettin’ better,” The Queen says gently. “I couldn’t find him for a few months, but he blew back into town after a bit. He’s stayin’ with Hermes again, and misses you somethin’ awful. Here, he gave me this.”

Persephone pulls something from her pocket, a parchment-wrapped envelope that’s stuffed thick, and slides it across the table to Eurydice. She picks it up, and feels tears prick the corners of her eyes when she recognizes Orpheus’ handwriting, her name printed on the paper as carefully as he recorded music notes for his song.

She slides it into the pocket of her overalls, to read later when she is in her bunk and not surrounded by the clamor of a bar. 

“Made me promise about a hundred times to hand it to you directly,” Persephone says, and smiles.

Eurydice nods, even though her chest is tight and her eyes sting — she can’t tell if it’s from alcohol or emotion. “Thank you. I... I’m glad he’s okay.”

“Hermes will watch him, don’t you worry,” Persephone says. “But how are you doin’, down here?”

“Depends,” Eurydice answers. “Some days it’s fine, some days it feels like the world’s endin’.”

“Sister, that’s the way of the world,” She says, refilling Eurydice’s glass with something bitter and amber-colored that tastes like memories. “It ends, then it keeps on goin’. You’ve got to keep on goin’ right along with it.”

-

Sometimes she can’t quite remember the exact tune of Orpheus’ song, and she thinks she’s forgotten again. Despite the fact that she’s already dead, the melody is her lifeline, the only thing connecting her to her lover walking above. 

Every time she thinks she’s forgotten, she hurriedly recounts her name, his name, and her past. She writes another letter to send up top.

Each time the train chugs into the station, Eurydice is there, weaving past the lost-looking shades as they make their way into the rest of their eternity. When she makes her way to the front of the locomotive, Charon is there with a parchment-wrapped parcel for her, signed with a stanza of poetry and her lover’s name.

The thing about time in the Underworld is that it ebbs and flows. It moves but nothin’ much changes everything is either already dead or immortal. 

Eurydice doesn’t count time in days, or years. 

Instead, she counts time in letters from her husband, stacked in her bedside drawer. In swings of her pickaxe as it breaks through layers of stones each day in the mines. In departures of their Lady, where after the train has pulled away from the station Eurydice will share a glance with Hades as they lament the pain of lost lovers that they share. In returns of the Goddess, where Eurydice can’t help but feel a little bitter as the King and Queen walk arm-in-arm as she sits alone in her bunk with only pre-written poetry to keep her company.

The only time she thinks about how many years it’s been is when Lady Persephone visits her a few days after she arrives, annually, and pours her a drink (although the Queen is much more sober now) and talks about what it’s like up top. They talk about stars, and how the weather’s been gettin’ better, and Orpheus. He’s taken to wandering, in between train visits up top. He always makes it back in time to send something to Eurydice, though. 

So the first time Charon tells her there’s no letter for her, she doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t know how long it’s been, exactly, but she thinks it’s been a long, long while based on the stacks of letters she has. He’s never not-written before.

She doesn’t know what to do, ‘cept to take her place in the mines and drive her pickaxe into the stones, again and again and again. She wonders if she digs for long enough she’ll find her answers, or maybe just break out of hell and find herself back up top, with him. 

The only thing she finds is dirt and rocks.

-

It’s early October, and Hadestown is still riding the high of the return of their Lady. Perhaps it’s her imagination, but Eurydice thinks the foremen are always a little kinder in the Autumn. 

She meanders down the street toward the mess hall, kicking a stone in front of her with a dust-covered boot. She doesn’t pause as she crosses the main road and passes the train platform, but glances upwards as a locomotive rolls into the station and releases the newly-dead into the open, coal-covered arms of Hadestown. 

She almost turns away, and continues toward her destination, but something makes her stop. Turn. Freeze. 

Despite the time that has passed, in death he looks the same as he did on the day that she can’t forget, standing in a dimly-lit tunnel. 

She takes an unsteady step forward, all plans of finding something to eat abandoned, and suddenly he is _ here _ , solid and real and  _ here _ . He turns, and his face breaks into a grin.

“It’s you,” She breathes, and pulls him against her so they are embracing. 

He buries his face in her hair. “It’s me.” 


End file.
